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God Help the Child

Toni Morrison

Start date: November 1, 2021

Finish date: November 19, 2021

Discussion: Author's Pick

Why we're reading this: God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
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What Members Thought

Jun 26, 2015 Michelle rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club, 2016-popsugar-reading-challenge, diaspora

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest writers of our time. Yet sometimes as beautifully as she writes, I have a tough time reading and fully understanding her work.
God Help the Child is in part about rejection and abuse but it is also a love story. Lula Ann (Bride) is abandoned by her father and reviled by her mother because of her obsidian-midnight skin color. Booker is a mystery unto himself. He carries his past upon his shoulders like a burden. Although he is quite beautiful and the sex is ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Apr 29, 2015 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: general-fiction, favorites, reviewed, modern-classics

Morrison boldly looks into the traumatic face of reality -- the stories we all know exist in our world, but that we tuck away into dark recesses in our mind so that we may be comfortable in our every day lives. Expertly written and unashamedly direct, this is a must read.

God Help the Child follows the character Bride, whose story is complimented by the satellite stories of the people who come into contact with her life -- Sweetness, Booker, Brooklyn, Sofia, Queen, and Rain. Bride is a young woma Morrison boldly looks into the traumatic face of reality -- the stories we all know exist in our world, but that we tuck away into dark recesses in our mind so that we may be comfortable in our every day lives. Expertly written and unashamedly direct, this is a must read.

God Help the Child follows the character Bride, whose story is complimented by the satellite stories of the people who come into contact with her life -- Sweetness, Booker, Brooklyn, Sofia, Queen, and Rain. Bride is a young woman who has escaped her sheltered and oppressed life at home with her mother, Sweetness, and has now made it big as the developer of a cosmetics line for a major company. Unwanted by her mother because of her dark skin, Bride turns the tables, so to speak, using her dark skin as a shield and as a brand in the corporate world. A seemingly vapid character, Bride knows that she is beautiful and spends much of her time considering this fact -- worrying over it so much so, and being willfully ignorant of the world around her -- that parts of her beautiful body begin to disappear as though they were never there in the first place. Her lover, Booker, leaves her without reason. Her best friend, Brooklyn, stabs her in the back, and she ends up going on a spur-of-the-moment adventure to locate Booker, and find -- what? She doesn't really know, and neither do we.

There is an obvious surface story here, but underneath that Morrison takes on the themes of race, beauty, exploitation, rape, incarceration, child molestation, hatred, fear, the confusing nature of love, and the hardships of child rearing. Heavy stuff! But her handling of this subject matter is superbly nuanced while still being clearly present. I suggest reading it all in one go -- at 178 pages that is certainly doable. And then, go back and read it again, more leisurely this time.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is following current events in our world -- at all. Also, anyone who enjoys reading writers at the top of their linguistic game -- this book is for you. Morrison's prose are succinct and beautiful. No word is wasted; no extra words are needed. Superb. Have I said that yet? Superb. ...more

5 likes · Like · see review